een what is
good and what is inferior in their own work. You must not expect much
praise, and least of all from other artists, because no artist is ever very
deeply interested in another artist's work, except in the work of the two
or three who can do easily what he is trying to do. But it is a deep
pleasure, which may be frankly enjoyed, to turn out a fine bit of work;
though you must not waste much time over enjoying it, because you have got
to go on to the next."

"I always think it must be very awful," said Vincent, "when it dawns upon a
man that his mind is getting stiff and his faculty uncertain, and that he
is not doing good work any more. What ought people to do about stopping?"

"It's very hard to say," said Father Payne. "The happiest thing of all is,
I expect, to die before that comes; and the next best thing is to know when
to stop and to want to stop. But many people get a habit of work, and fall
into dreariness without it."

"Isn't it better to go on with the delusion that you are just as good as
ever--like Wordsworth and Browning?" said Rose.

"No, I don't think that is better," said Father Payne, "because it means a
sort of blindness. It is very curious in the case of Browning, because he
learned exactly how to do things. He had his method, he fixed upon an
abnormal personality or a curious incident, and he turned it inside out
with perfect fidelity. But after a certain time in his life, the thing
became suddenly heavy and uninteresting. Something evaporated--I do not
know what! The trick is done just as deftly, but one is bored; one simply
doesn't care to see the inside of a new person, however well dissected.
There's no life, no beauty about the later things. Wordsworth is somehow
different--he is always rather noble and prophetic. The later poems are not
beautiful, but they issue from a beautiful idea--a passion of some kind.
But the later Browning poems are not passionate--they remind one of a
surgeon tucking up his sleeves for a set of operations. I expect that
Browning was too humble; he loved a gentlemanly convention, and Wordsworth
certainly did not do that. If you want to know how a poet should
_live_, read Dorothy Wordsworth's journals at Grasmere; if you want to
know how he should _feel_, read the letters of Keats."

XXXIII

OF MEEKNESS

I had been having some work looked over by Father Payne, who had been
somewhat trenchant. "You have been beating a broken drum, you know," he had